Guild Wars 2

The Engineer has suffered from several nerfs and a wonky class mechanic throughout its existence in the effort to make it “balanced.” Unfortunately, the result of these actions and design have rendered the profession effectively a “non-class,” meaning that it can’t do anything well—only mediocre at best; it has no strong place in the game like a Warrior or Mesmer does because its unique skills have so little impact on most battlefields comparatively to those of other, better-defined classes. They are the Spoony Bard of GW2. However, this can be fixed.

The problem with the Engineer F-skills manifests mainly in the intrinsic relationship between a utility skill and its respective tool-belt counterpart. In this regard, the Gadget and Turret utilities often have underwhelming Tool-belt versions. Also, the Rifle skill-set is a little janky (makes little sense given the effects and current set-up), but that’s another story that I will cover later.

Back to the Gadgets and Turrets—this is because what is effectively happening is that ANet is sort of attempting to double the amount of skills that an Engineer gets with the Tool-belt abilities. The only problem is that both of the skills now have to be balanced in order to be fair. Unfortunately, this justified balancing typically leaves only one skill out of the pair actually worth using or sometimes rendering an entire utility/tool-belt combo not worth bringing along at all due to long recharges or whimpy effects. It’s better to have just one skill with one or two good effects than two skills with effects that simply aren’t worth the trouble of losing a Utility slot.

Furthermore, the Engineer suffers from another tool-belt-based issue: RNG. Building a class mechanic around RNG does not make that class flavorful; it makes it unwieldy. This is the Engineer’s Elixir problem. GW2 is full of active and reactive skills alike that people can activate for concrete effects (I’m going to press this button because I KNOW for fact that “X” will happen). Messing with that—as much as it is in the interest of “flavor”—is not a wise policy. Players need to know what to expect from their own abilities in the game.

So here we go—Solution Time!
Merge most of the current Tool-belt skills with their respective Utility skills, then rework Turrets and Tool-kits into the new Engineer class mechanic. Elixir X and Mortar need a rework. The Rifle main-hand weapon also needs a simple adjustment to make more sense.

Solution Part 1: Addressing the Engineer’s F-skills, Turrets and Tool-kits
F1-F4 are now reserved exclusively for Turrets and whole Tool-kits.
F1 is a “Buffed Slot” that grants bonuses to the item slotted in there.
If a turret produced from the F1 slot is picked up as a bundle by someone, it grants its carrier specific bonuses to stats based on the turret. Likewise, a Tool-kit wielded by an Engineer that came from the F1 slot would grant bonuses to the Engineer while that Tool-kit was active.

Turrets, in addition to functioning as they do now (they have an auto-attack and an overcharge that the Engineer can activate), also function as do Conjured Weapons. A player (whether he or she be an Engineer or not) can pick them up, gain 4 more skills related to the turret, and a 5th skill that allows the player to set the turret back down. For instance, the Flame Turret could be something similar to a flamethrower (maybe with an actual reflection air-blast this time) or the Rifle Turret could be a rifle with a Gatling Gun rapid-fire skill). This obviously gives more versatility to an Engineer and his allies, but more importantly it provides the Engineer a way to transport his or her turrets (at least one if working alone) from place to place.

Engineers use tool-kits and turrets enough that it doesn’t necessarily make sense for them to constantly consume 1 or 2 slots on their utility bar when they could use those for gadgets or elixirs. They’re a flavorful part of that profession and deserve to be implemented freely—especially given that the nerfs in recent months have rendered them rather light on impact.

Solution Part 2: Addressing Elixirs and 2 of the Engineer’s least used Elites: Elixir X and Mortar

Elixirs have a good personal effect but rely too much on RNG to really have good support effects when thrown at other players. Elixir utility skills instead should simply be targeted projectiles that execute their effects at the targeted location. The RNG, tool-belt versions of the skills would be removed.

Elixir X is now a thrown projectile.
Solution: One throws it at a target area and that target in that area has his or her Elite Skill overridden by one of the Elite Skill RNG options provided by Elixir X (Yes, there could be multiple targets that receive a new elite). Each target affected by Elixir X would be subject to an individual RNG elite drop, meaning that four people under the influence of a single Elixir X would probably not beget four Tornadoes but rather, more likely, four different forms.

While under the influence of Elixir X, a player’s Elite Skill is replaced with the transformation that he or she was assigned after the Elixir X struck the ground. The player has 15 seconds to activate that before it goes back to being the original Elite Skill. Upon activation, the transformation lasts 5 seconds, or less if the player wishes to [End Transformation] (works identically as does [Stow Elixir Gun]) at will in case there is an Engineer running about throwing Elixir X’s on people that don’t want their elite changed for 15 seconds.

A player whose Elite Skill was replaced by Elixir X’s overriding effect would still maintain its internal cool-down. That is to say that if a player’s Elite Skill was not recharging, and that player used the Elite given to him or her by Elixir X, then that player’s Elite Skill would return after the transaction as it was before: not on cooldown. By the same token, if a player’s Elite Skill was on cooldown and the same thing happened, that player’s elite skill would proceed on cooldown as usual throughout the duration of the effects of Elixir X.

Mortar simply needs a longer range to be viable.
Solution: Mortar’s range is increased to 2000 with the Range-increase Trait granting an additional 20% range (2400 total). 1400 Range is barely 3 steps outside of 1200 range, which makes the prospect of long-range support mostly out of the question for our Mortar-inclined Engineer. Since the player is tied to a single location combined with the fact that 2000 range means that people will probably see the projectiles roaring in after the first one hits makes this an acceptable buff. The Mortar would be good for a few initial hits before either the battle ended or everyone caught on to what the Engineer was doing and began playing more reactively. However, it first needs range in order to deliver that initial surprise.

Solution Part 3: Addressing the main-hand Rifle

The Rifle’s current skill set doesn’t make a lot of sense given its effects:
1 – A 1000-Range attack with no effects beyond piercing
2 – A 1000-Range immobilize; 10s recharge
3 – A tight AoE poke with a very short range (400) that needs to honestly be inside melee range (100) for full effect; 10s recharge
4 – A CC burst attack with a very short range (400) that puts CC on the user; 15s recharge
5 – A 700-Range gap-closer; 20s recharge

The best the Rifle has to offer typically comes when the Engineer has his or her target snared and within Melee Range. If that’s the case, then make it so the auto attack rewards that!

New Rifle main-hand skill set:
1 – Blunderbuss (base damage at 100 range: 350; at 400 range: 225; at 900 range: 130—or something similar to those—4 stack of bleeding at 100-0 range; 1 stack at 400-100 range; 0 stacks at 900-400 range)
2 – Hip Shot (still pierces and now inflicts 3 stacks of Vulnerability for 4 seconds; 8 second recharge)
3 – Net Shot
4 – Overcharged Shot (if possible, remove the self-CC and just make the player slide/jump backwards about 600 range; recharge could be upped to 20)
5 – Jump Shot

All of the original skill functionalities would remain the same except for the specifics in parentheses. The recharges could be kept somewhat lengthy in order to promote Engineers switching into their new F-skill Tool-kits or using their F-skill Turrets as Conjured Weapons.

There! And that would be a strong start on the road to making the Engineer a stronger, more defined class that could find a niche in fast-paced, mobile and hard-hitting GW2 combat.

Swagg.9236:

So here we go—Solution Time!
Merge most of the current Tool-belt skills with their respective Utility skills, then rework Turrets and Tool-kits into the new Engineer class mechanic. Elixir X and Mortar need a rework. The Rifle main-hand weapon also needs a simple adjustment to make more sense.

Solution Part 1: Addressing the Engineer’s F-skills, Turrets and Tool-kits
F1-F4 are now reserved exclusively for Turrets and whole Tool-kits.
F1 is a “Buffed Slot” that grants bonuses to the item slotted in there.
If a turret produced from the F1 slot is picked up as a bundle by someone, it grants its carrier specific bonuses to stats based on the turret. Likewise, a Tool-kit wielded by an Engineer that came from the F1 slot would grant bonuses to the Engineer while that Tool-kit was active.

Turrets, in addition to functioning as they do now (they have an auto-attack and an overcharge that the Engineer can activate), also function as do Conjured Weapons. A player (whether he or she be an Engineer or not) can pick them up, gain 4 more skills related to the turret, and a 5th skill that allows the player to set the turret back down. For instance, the Flame Turret could be something similar to a flamethrower (maybe with an actual reflection air-blast this time) or the Rifle Turret could be a rifle with a Gatling Gun rapid-fire skill). This obviously gives more versatility to an Engineer and his allies, but more importantly it provides the Engineer a way to transport his or her turrets (at least one if working alone) from place to place.

Engineers use tool-kits and turrets enough that it doesn’t necessarily make sense for them to constantly consume 1 or 2 slots on their utility bar when they could use those for gadgets or elixirs. They’re a flavorful part of that profession and deserve to be implemented freely—especially given that the nerfs in recent months have rendered them rather light on impact.

I really like this method of handling kits and turrets, I have to say. Would certainly be interesting.

Bumping because change to title (I’m planning on making more of these types of posts for other professions).